About the site:

For those of you who are interested in creating your own portal / websites or anything similar to VK.com.my, here's how I did it:

VK runs on Free / Open Source Software.
All the thanks goes to:

• Linux
• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP

Collectively known as the LAMP stack, it's responsible for most of the websites on the internet.

VK is powered by drupal which is a generic CMS. While there are other CMS's around (oh i've tried most of them), Drupal happens to be the best for this job. One of the more popular alternatives includes Xoops, Mambo, Joomla. But Joomla is not nearly as matured as Drupal, it comes empty with nothing, which means you'll have to install most of the application (ie: Forum, Classifieds, Image Gallery) from scratch. The best I've seen however is XOOPS. The leaning curve for it is a lil steeper though. I will admit however, that Joomla does have several better looking themes, and the code looks way more mature and a lil more optimized.

Speaking of themes, this portal runs on Deco which is one of the better ones I've found. I have a few hacks of my own in the theme, specifically for Signature support as well as Icons, and a few bugfixes which I have happily contibuted back to the project.

If you're interested in setting up a portal of your own for any reason, gimme a buzz, I'll be glad to help wherever possible.

Open Source Software is always free.. But your time isn't!